Contents

Name

"Eriugena" is perhaps the most suitable surname form as he
himself uses it in one manuscript. It means 'Ireland (Ériu)-born'.
'Scottus' in the Middle
Ages was the Latin term for "Irish or Gaelic". The spelling 'Scottus' has the authority
of the early manuscripts until perhaps the 11th century.
Occasionally he is also named 'Scottigena' ("Scot-born") in the
manuscripts.

Life

Eriugena was highly proficient in Greek, which was rare at that time in
mainland Europe, and was thus
well-placed for translation work. Although he was born in Ireland, he later moved to France (about 845) and took over
the Palatine Academy at the invitation of King Charles the
Bald. He succeeded Alcuin of York (735
- 804) as head of the Palace School.[1]
The reputation of this school seems to have increased greatly under
Eriugena's leadership, and the philosopher himself was treated with
indulgence by the king. Whereas Alcuin was a schoolmaster rather
than a philosopher, Eriugena was a noted Greek scholar. He was one
of the most original thinkers of the entire Middle Ages.[1]

William of Malmesbury's amusing
story illustrates both the character of Eriugena and the position
he occupied at the French court. The king having asked, Quid
distat inter sottum et Scottum? (What separates a sot
(drunkard) from an Irishman?) Eriugena replied, Mensa
tantum (Only a table).

He remained in France for at least thirty years. At the request
of the Byzantine emperor Michael III (ca. 858),
Eriugena undertook some translation into Latin of the works
of Pseudo-Dionysius and added his own commentary. He was thus the
first to introduce the ideas of Neoplatonism from the Greek into
the Western
European intellectual tradition, where they were to have a
strong influence on Christian theology.

The latter part of his life lies in total obscurity. The story
that in 882 he was invited to Oxford by Alfred the Great, that he labored
there for many years, became abbot at Malmesbury, and was stabbed to
death by his pupils with their styli, is apparently without any
satisfactory foundation, and doubtless refers to some other
Johannes. Eriugena probably never left France, and Haurau has
advanced some reasons for fixing the date of his death about 877.
From the evidence available it is impossible to determine whether
he was a cleric or a layman, although it is difficult
to deny that the general conditions of the time make it more than
probable that he was a cleric and perhaps a monk.

The first of the works known to have been written by Eriugena
during this period was a treatise on the Eucharist, which has not come down to us. In
it he seems to have advanced the doctrine that the Eucharist was
merely symbolical or commemorative, an opinion for which Berengar of Tours was at a later date
censured and condemned. As a part of his penance, Berengarius is
said to have been compelled to burn publicly Eriugena's treatise.
So far as we can learn, however, Eriugena's orthodoxy was not at
the time suspected, and a few years later he was selected by Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, to defend the doctrine of liberty of will
against the extreme predestinarianism of the monk Gottschalk (Gotteschalchus). The treatise
De divina praedestinatione, composed on this occasion, has
been preserved, and from its general tenor one cannot be surprised
that the author's orthodoxy was at once and vehemently suspected.
The Church was threatened by Gottschalk's position because it
denies the inherent value of good works.[1]

Eriugena argues the question entirely on speculative grounds,
and starts with the bold affirmation that philosophy and religion
are fundamentally one and the same. Even more significant is his
handling of authority and reason. Eriugena offered a skilled proof
that there can be predestination only to the good, in that all men
are summoned to be saints.[1]
The work was warmly assailed by Drepanius Florus, canon of Lyons,
and Prudentius, and was condemned by two councils: that of Valence in
855, and that of Langres in
859. By the former council his arguments were described as
Pultes Scotorum ("Irish porridge") and commentum
diaboli ("an invention of the devil").

Eriugena was a Christian universalist; he
believed that all people and all beings, including animals, reflect
attributes of God, towards whom all are capable of progressing and
to which all things ultimately must return.[2] To
Eriugena, hell was not a place but a condition and punishment was
purifying, not penal. He was a believer in apocatastasis, which maintains that all
moral creatures—angels, humans and devils—will eventually come to a
harmony in God's kingdom.[3] He
based his beliefs on the Greek writings of the early Christian
fathers, like Origen, and
considered himself an orthodox Christian thinker.[2]

Advertisements

Translation of Ps.
Dionysius

Eriugena's next work was a Latin translation of Dionysius the
Areopagite undertaken at the request of Charles the Bald. This also
has been preserved, and fragments of a commentary by Eriugena on
Dionysius have been discovered in manuscript. A translation of the
Areopagite's writings was not likely to alter the opinion already
formed as to Eriugena's orthodoxy. Pope Nicholas I was offended that the
work had not been submitted for approval before being given to the
world, and ordered Charles to send Eriugena to Rome, or at least to dismiss him from his court.
There is no evidence, however, that this order was attended to.

Periphyseon

Eriugena's great work, De divisione naturae
(Periphyseon), which was condemned by a council at Sens by Honorius III (1225),
who described it as "swarming with worms of heretical perversity," and by Gregory XIII in 1585, is arranged in five
books. The form of exposition is that of dialogue; the method of reasoning is the syllogism. Nature
(Natura in Latin or physis in Greek) is the name
of the most comprehensive of all unities, that which contains
within itself the most primary division of all things, that which
is (being) and that which is not (nonbeing). The Latin title refers
to these four divisions of nature: (1) that which creates and is
not created; (2) that which is created and creates; (3) that which
is created and does not create; (4) that which is neither created
nor creates. The first is God as the
ground or origin of all things, the last is God as the final end or
goal of all things, that into which the world of created things
ultimately returns. The second and third together compose the
created universe, which is
the manifestation of God, God in process, Theophania; the
second is the world of Platonic
ideas or forms, and the third is a more pantheistic or pandeistic world, depending
on the interference of God. Thus we distinguish in the divine
system beginning, middle and end; but these three are in essence
one; the difference is only the consequence of our finite
comprehension. We are compelled to envisage this eternal process
under the form of time, to apply temporal distinctions to that
which is extra- or supra-temporal.

The Division of Nature has been called the final
achievement of ancient philosophy, a work which "synthesizes the
philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries." It is
presented, like Alcuin's book, as a dialogue between Master and
Pupil. Eriugena anticipates Thomas Aquinas, who said that one cannot
know and believe a thing at the same time. Eriugena explains that
reason is necessary to understand and interpret revelation.
"Authority is the source of knowledge", but the reason of mankind
is the norm by which all authority is judged.[1]

Influence

Eriugena's work is distinguished by the freedom of his
speculation, and the boldness with which he works out his logical or dialectical system of the universe. He marks,
indeed, a stage of transition from the older Platonizing philosophy to the later
scholasticism. For him philosophy is not in the service of theology. The above-quoted
assertion as to the substantial identity between philosophy and
religion is repeated almost word for word by many of the later
scholastic writers, but its significance depends upon the selection
of one or other term of the identity as fundamental or primary. For
Eriugena, philosophy or reason is first, primitive; authority or
religion is secondary, derived.

His influence was greater with mystics than with logicians, but he was
responsible for a revival of philosophical thought which had
remained largely dormant in western Europe after the death of Boethius.

After Eriugena another medieval thinker of significance was Berengar of
Tours, professor at the monastic school in the French city.
Berengar believed that truth is obtained through reason rather than
revelation. St. Peter Damian agreed with Tertullian that it is not
necessary for men to think because God has spoken for them. Damian
was prior of Fonte
Avellana and afterward Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia. He died in 1072.
Lanfranc (1005 -
1089) was prior of Bec in Normandy. Like Damian he
believed mostly in faith, but admitted the importance of reason. St.
Anselm was a pupil and successor of St. Peter Damian.[1]

Eriugena's work became known in the 1680s:

On the whole, one might be surprised that even in the
seventeenth century pantheism did not gain a complete victory over
theism; for the most original, finest, and most thorough European
expositions of it (none of them, of course, will bear comparison
with the Upanishads of the Vedas) all came to light at that period,
namely through Bruno, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Scotus
Erigena. After Scotus Erigena had been lost and forgotten for many
centuries, he was again discovered at Oxford and in 1681, thus four
years after Spinoza's death, his work first saw the light in print.
This seems to prove that the insight of individuals cannot make
itself felt so long as the spirit of the age is not ripe to receive
it. On the other hand, in our day (1851) pantheism, although
presented only in Schelling's eclectic and confused revival
thereof, has become the dominant mode of thought of scholars and
even of educated people. This is because Kant had preceded it with his
overthrow of theistic dogmatism and had cleared the way for it,
whereby the spirit of the age was ready for it, just as a ploughed
field is ready for the seed.

– Schopenhauer,
Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of
the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real"

Leszek Kolakowski, the renowned Polish Marx scholar, has
mentioned Eriugena as one of the primary influences on Hegel's, and
therefore Marx's, dialectical form. In particular, he called De
Divisione Naturae a prototype of Hegel's Phenomenology of
Spirit[4]

From Wikiquote

No one enters heaven except through philosophy.

Johannes
Scotus or Scottus (c. 815 – c. 877) was an Irish theologian and Neoplatonist philosopher who settled at
the court of Charles the Bald. His tendency
towards pantheism led to
his work being posthumously condemned as heretical. The usual
modern form of his name, Johannes Scotus Eriugena
or Erigena, is unrecorded before the 17th
century.

For authority proceeds from true reason, but reason certainly
does not proceed from authority. For every authority which is not
upheld by true reason is seen to be weak, whereas true reason is
kept firm and immutable by her own powers and does not require to
be confirmed by the assent of any authority.

What, then, is it to treat of philosophy, unless to lay down
the rules of the true religion by which we seek rationally and
adore humbly God, who is the first and sovereign cause of all
things? Hence it follows that the true philosophy is the true
religion, and reciprocally that the true religion is the true
philosophy.